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pool-like bowls and ramps. The City Council opposed that sort of skate park in 2000 when $85,000 was approved for the current park. “A bunch of bowls and ramps, you don’t really need that from a street skater’s perspective,” Tice said. “What you really want is a replicated urban environment. Stair sets, gaps and ledges — that’s all we’ve really asked for.” Tice pointed to a company called California Skateparks as the ideal builder of such a skate park. Swimming pool-style skate parks are “a trend that is dying slowly but surely,” said Brian Pino, a designer for the Southern California company. Many of the “skate plazas” pictured on the company’s website are artistically designed and almost indistinguishable from a nice courtyard. These “replicated urban environments” are very popular with city officials in Los Angeles, which is building three to four of such parks a year at half the cost of a swimming pool style park, Pino said. Many fit seamlessly into larger parks, the ledges doubling as park benches and ramps doubling as architectural focal points. At $25 a square foot, Mountain View could build a 10,000 square foot skate park along those lines for as little as $250,000, Pino said.
Skateboarders have sought out those “urban” features on Castro Street and even other parts of Rengstorff Park. At a recent meeting between city staff and skateboarders, local teen Maurice Ontaveros mentioned that skaters are known to enjoy a staircase near the Rengstorff Park tennis courts — until they are thrown off. And those who seek the ledges and stairs downtown can face bigger problems: “You have to worry about cops and security and tickets and having it on you record,” Tice said. On Friday, the most popular feature at the Rengstorff skate park was the one that most looked like an urban feature. It is a simple boxlike structure less than two feet high with what looks like a low staircase rail sticking up from the middle and extending downward. While the ramps in the park went largely unused (the mini half pipe was popular with some), there was a long line of skaters waiting for their turn to either jump over the rail or slide down it. In response to the skateboarders’ complaints, the city has come up with a $23,500 proposal to add a longer 12-foot-wide, 4-foot-tall half-pipe ($9,000), a pair of 6-footlong “skate benches” ($1,200) that skaters could sit on or skate on, and a 12-foot-long “grind box” ($2,000) that is a foot-and-a-half high and
1-foot-wide. A kinked rail and a curved rail in the corner of the park that skaters said were never used would be removed. And a 4-foot wide quarter pipe would be relocated to improve traffic flow. Despite the idea’s popularity, it is not part of the plan to include a set of stairs in the skate park. City staff considered switching from asphalt to a concrete surface but found that moving the ramps could damage them and found a $70,000 MICHELLE LE estimate to install the Sean Rapp does a “5-0 to fakie” as Clay Lambertson watches at the Rengstorff skate concrete to be cost park on March 5. prohibitive. The proposal is the result of two city-sponsored meet- lights to allow nighttime skating, middle of a Rengstorff Park Master ings in which 25 skateboarders which they say exists in a Sunny- Plan process and the next opporshowed up to discuss improve- vale skate park. But because of the tunity to weigh in on the long-term ments to the skate park. The pro- potential impacts on the neighbor- future of the park will be a meeting posals were supported by the teens hood, that option would require on April 8 at 6:30 p.m. at the Senior on the Youth Advisory Committee some study during the Rengstorff Center, 266 Escuela Ave. on March 7. The City Council’s Master Plan process, Maurantonio Whether the city spends $23,500 Youth Services Committee will said. or $1 million on the skate park, review the proposal soon to see if If there is wide support for it, a “Whatever they can put in will be a it is possible to fold it into the city’s whole new skate park could be part lot better than what we have now,” 2011-12 budget, Maurantonio said. of a major revamp of Rengstorff Ontaveros said. Skateboarders have also asked for Park. The city happens to be in the V
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